Sustaining LGBT Migrant Leaders

Our LGBTQ+, migrant and POC communities are facing the heaviest impact of the pandemic. Illness brings more suffering to those who are facing oppression and violence.

ICE has us detained, vulnerable and defenseless in unhygienic conditions without basic medical care.

Our jobs can’t be done from home and while our work sustains everyone, we are exposed to a high risk of infection.

Governments and economic racism along with homophobia and transphobia deny us basic healthcare and wellbeing. Now we are more exposed with less access to the care we need to survive.

More than half of our membership has already lost jobs. Any relief that the government offers will be difficult or impossible for our people, undocumented, detained, sexworkers and others, to access.

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What is really going on?

The pandemic is exposing the foundations of our society: Coronavirus and the government response just magnify white supremacy, colonization, capitalism and gender violence. The politicians and corporations are clearer than ever that they put more value in the profit and power of a few people than in the lives of everyone.

At this moment everyone is looking at the powerful people - the governors, presidents and world leaders who are actually part of the systems that cause violence. We have to maintain our communities' power to demand justice during and after the pandemic.

#Free

ThemAll

In Phoenix, LGBTQ+ migrants and people of color are poised to absorb some of the heaviest impacts of the advancing pandemic. In detention centers our people are exposed, vulnerable and defenseless. Our migrant families work the jobs that don’t stop and can’t be done through teleconferencing - both sustaining society and placing us at the forefront of infection.

As communities denied health care and wellbeing because of gender identity, immigration law, economics and structural racism, we are also most at risk and least able to access and afford the care we need to survive. The relief packages proposed by governments are at best unlikely to reach our people - undocumented, detained, sex workers and others.